Hello and welcome back to KID NOSTALGIA, your online guide to monster, science fiction and horror movies ranging from the classics that we all love to see to the more… obscure releases – ones like this! Filmgroup presents a Roger Corman production THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS a Roger Corman film starring Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph and Mel Welles. This movie to the 1986 film is what The Thing from Another World (1951) is to The Thing (1982)… by that, I mean that it inspired a movie made nearly 30 years later that got all the credit while most people didn’t realize there was such thing as “an original.”
So today, I’m going to show you said original. This doesn’t count as part of the Roger Corman tribute, it’s just that while I was covering them, I realized that I hadn’t actually reviewed many of his films before, so, I’m catching up. The film also has Dick Miller and Jack Nicholson in early roles, who you may recognise from Joe Dante films and The Shining (1980) respectively. Speaking of which, Jackie Joseph actually played Dick Miller’s wife in the Gremlins films, probably because of this. Without further ado, let’s get into this… after I’ve warned you that, as always, this post will contain spoilers, so viewer discretion is advised. Seymour Krelboined (Jonathan Haze) is fired from a failing flower store on skid row and attempts to get his job back by impressing his boss, Gravis Mushnick (Mel Welles), with a plant he gets from a Japanese gardener. That explains everything – dude accidentally bought Biollante! I think I know this music from somewhere… Mushnick is initially pretty uninterested, but gives Seymour a week to nurse the plant back to health, otherwise, both him and his colleague, Audrey Fulquard (Jackie Joseph), whom he named the plant after, are fired. Nothing seems to work until Seymour pricks himself and “Audrey Jr.” tastes some of his blood and grows a foot overnight. It gains the place loads of traction until, suddenly, it falls ill again. Seymour promises to have it healthy again for the morning, and that night, he accidentally gets a drunk man killed when he accidentally throws a rock at the guy, making him fall into train tracks, killing him. Seymour attempts to dispose of the body, when suddenly, the plant starts beckoning him to feed it, so he feeds it the body. Man went from being concerned about being anemic to just casually feeding a talking plant body parts without asking a question. Mushnick witnesses Seymour feeding the plant, but the next day, the plant is nearly the size of a man and is earning the shop hundreds, so he decides to not tell police.
Seymour goes to the dentist, and when the dentist attempts to kill him over… some ruined flowers… Seymour kills him in self defence and, you’ll never guess, feeds his remains to the plant. Authorities begin to catch on, and Seymour begins to catch on that Mushnick is catching on, and he somehow manages to get a date with Audrey. Mushnick watches the plant while Seymour is having dinner with Audrey, and Charles B. Griffith breaks into the store to rob it, but Mushnick lures him into the plant, confirming his suspicions. Seymour decides to stop feeding the plant, but it, get this, hypnotizes him, and forces him to find food. Seymour manages to accidentally kill a prostitute, as all men did in the 60s, and the next day, an awards ceremony is being held for Seymour in front of a load of people when suddenly, the plant’s buds begin to open and- GREAT MOTHER OF GOD! Each of the victims’ faces are inside each of the buds, and for some reason these two people think they’re beautiful, but Seymour then has to go on the run from the police and escapes by… hiding in a toilet, before running back to the empty shop and climbing into the plant’s mouth with a kitchen knife in an attempt to kill it. Later, Audrey, Mushnick, Seymour’s mother and the two police officers turn up in the shop to see the plant wither and die as another bud opens, revealing Seymour’s face. What. And that’s the end, folks. I don’t remember that ending from the 1986 movie. It’s not perfect, but you know what – it was fun. It holds a pretty consistent pace throughout the film, it’s the right amount of over the top while maintaining its realism… and by realism, I mean by Roger Corman standards. But does it hold up compared to the 1986 version? Let’s find out.
Kid Nostalgia 